Sample this: An elderly guy who earlier worked as a Federal Agent in USA’s most esteemed national agency now retired and working as a security head of a pop star. His daughter gets kidnapped in Paris and trafficked into the prostitution ring. He has 48 hours to trace her or she will not be found again. Yes, this is the story of “Taken” movie. But for others, this is the story of “Krishna Arjuna Yuddham” second half too.
Other than the fact that here there are two heroes and their girlfriends are kidnapped by one such notorious gang, there is nothing new. But why did such a terrific screenplay like “Taken” failed to make any impact on Telugu audiences even though director Merlapaka and hero Nani copied it well? There is something called nativity, backstory and logical sense that is missing.
If a former federal agent goes all the way to Paris from New York and acts quite heroic it is logical. But if a Chittoor village guy who doesn’t even know spellings and general stuff comes to Hyderabad, tracks a trafficking gang, goes all the way to international waters to rescue girls, it sounds as stupid as it could be. While copying the total framework of “Taken”, Gandhi sent logics for a toss.
Coming to the other Europe pop star Krishna role, a guy who is of Indian origin and raised in Europe, cannot drive cars and other vehicles so comfortably in India. (the left-drive and right-drive thing). At the same time, it is not that easy to transfer 15 crores from Europe to India in 5-minutes as banks don’t even process such requests without the client meeting them in person (unless in the case of NRI accounts).
You may ask, who cares for logic in a movie, but without logic these days people are not receiving films well. With world cinema getting closer, people watching hell lot of international shows on Netflix and Amazon, a copy should be seriously done and if it is not ”taken’ well, then it will end up a damp squib. Simply saying, poor copies don’t work.